


Doctor Scully

by AweburnPhoenix



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Airplane Crashes, F/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Movie: The X-Files: I Want To Believe (2008), Survival, scully is a medical doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26420677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AweburnPhoenix/pseuds/AweburnPhoenix
Summary: Mulder and Scully get caught in a storm on their way back from the Caribbean. Scully has to take care of other passengers while they wait for help.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 15
Kudos: 37
Collections: X-Files Episode Fanfic Exchange (2020)





	Doctor Scully

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kyouryokusenshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyouryokusenshi/gifts).



> Dearest Val,
> 
> I hope this is what you were hoping to get. I love "Medical Doctor Scully" and I had a dozen other ideas to add, but couldn't get the writing to work. Hope you enjoy it!!
> 
> Huge thanks to @admiralty for her beta work :D You're an angel, girl! Any mistake that remains is my own.

Ten minutes after takeoff, Jessica noticed something was wrong. By the time she realized the radio wasn't working properly either, it was too late to turn the plane around. She couldn't risk crashing into another craft, this was bad enough. She carried the responsibility of about a dozen lives on her shoulders and making sure they landed safe and sound was her main priority. 

The best option seemed to be to try an emergency landing on the nearest islet, as she saw the storm coming and knew it wasn’t going to help with their situation. Then they'd have to contact the locals and get a rescue team. She'd been trained for this. 

Jessica wished she had kept flying commercial crafts. « _Let's move to the Bahamas, you can fly small planes there, short trips, easy life. It'll be almost vacation time 24/7_ », Megan had said. She shouldn't have listened to her wife. For the first time ever, Megan had been wrong. 

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Jess started, pressing the intercom button. "this is your pilot speaking. I need you to go back to your seats as soon as possible. Please, there's no need to panic. We're doing an emergency landing. Make sure your seat belts are fastened, grab the oxygen mask…"

"...and pray to whatever deity you believe in," she added after closing the line. 

Brian was sweating by her side. Not the best day to have gotten a rookie copilot. 

* * *

Mulder knew Scully wasn't very fond of turbulence. Thus, he wasn't surprised at all when, at the pilot's words, she grabbed his hand over the armrest and held it tight. He wanted to tell her everything was going to be okay, but there had been a pretty noticeable hint of worry in the pilot’s voice. 

Scully had noticed it too, and her usual composure in difficult times was eluding her. The oxygen mask seemed to have a life of its own, and she somehow needed Mulder to help her with it. She imagined him joking about the "adjust your own before helping little children" line, and she smiled behind the yellow cup. How was it that his mere presence never failed to make her feel better? 

They had been trapped in storms during flights before, but this one seemed tougher. Maybe it was the low flight, or maybe the small plane… Or maybe the Caribbean Sky wasn't supposed to be flown into in this time of year. By November, hurricane season was supposedly over, but thanks to climate change, storms had their own messy calendar nowadays. They had had a really pleasant time during their vacation in the Bahamas, it had been too good to be true. Of course, they were going out with a bang.

Lightning illuminated the sky and thunder echoed in their ears. It wasn’t raining, but they couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad thing. After some minutes the sky calmed down but the plane wasn’t doing any better.

It was a complicated landing, and at some point, they both thought they were not going to make it. The small plane finally crashed when making contact with the beach soil and Mulder bumped his head on the seat in front of him. However, he was quick to make sure that Scully was okay. Once they assessed each other’s condition, both of them took off their seat belts and masks to go help other passengers. Being an officer of the law was something one didn't lose over time, even after so many years away from it. Their instincts arose to make sure everybody made it out of the plane safe and sound and as soon as possible.

“I’ll get the door open!” Mulder yelled at her over the confusion. “You make sure everybody is alive and breathing,” he continued, but she was already on her way. God, he loved that woman!

Scully started taking care of the injured patients and making sure they could walk on their own two feet to get out. So far, there were only some bruises and panic attacks that she would make sure to check as soon as they were safely out of the wreckage.

Mulder started handling the evacuation door, and quickly a young guy named Michael appeared by his side and lent a hand. As it was a small plane, no flight attendant was on board, and the cabin crew was still not out. Mulder thought that was really a bad sign and left Michael handling the evacuation as soon as people started jumping out of the plane. 

After making sure that Scully was taking a quick look on the passenger at the back of the plane, he walked to the cockpit. Mulder was having real trouble opening the door—it was designed to not let anybody in after all—and started banging on it.

Finally, he heard a click and when he opened the door, he saw a man stretching over the control panel: he must have just hit the door button. 

"Are you two all right?" Mulder yelled over the fog and immediately realized they weren't. 

The front windshield was shattered, a thick branch the culprit. Having entered the cabin, one of its stems had dangerously stabbed the chest of the copilot. 

"Scully!" Mulder yelled immediately while he moved forward among the wreckage to get to the pilot, who hadn't moved yet. "Scully! I need you in here!" 

Quickly, he went to check the woman's neck on the left. Mulder sighed, relieved when he could find a somewhat steady albeit faint pulse. Her forehead was bleeding, something must have hit her. Scully would need to check her, but something told him that the other man needed his attention the most. 

"Sir? Can you hear me?" He finally focused on the man after calling for Scully again. 

The co-pilot was bleeding profusely on the right of his chest, and his pulse was going fast. He was looking for something to stop the hemorrhage when Scully finally crossed the threshold. 

"Oh my God," were the first words out of her mouth. 

"She has a pulse but is unconscious,” he quickly filled her in on the cockpit situation. “He…well, he hasn’t been so lucky. Help me with this," he encouraged her with a bunch of towels on his hands. 

Scully didn't move, panting hard.

"C'mon, honey. We don't have a second to lose—." 

"Mulder, we cannot help him," she mumbled, gravely. And immediately regained the strength to move on. 

There must be some emergency kit somewhere in there and she needed to find it. There had been nothing at the back of the small plane nor under the front seats. So she had guessed the first-aid kit should be in the cockpit. 

Mulder immediately thought she must have had a concussion, too. How could she go on like that? This was not the Scully he knew. That man needed their help.

"What…what are you saying?" 

"There’s…there’s probably a big vessel shattered, can't you see the amount of blood?” She tried to explain as she kept moving heaven and earth to find the goddamn kit. “We won't be able to make a transfusion in time… There's nothing we can do for him," Scully shook her head.

It hurt her to leave that poor man like that, but it was a matter of focusing on the people who had a chance. Anybody making emergency triage would have given this man a black tag. 

"Unbelt her and grab her,” she finally said, triumphantly locating the white and green case. “We gotta get outta here." 

Mulder was about to protest again when he saw her stop in her tracks, dropping the case as she leaned on the wall next to her, placing a hand on her belly.

Scully had trouble functioning. Her stomach was spinning and she couldn't think clearly, even though she was a hundred percent sure of her assessment on the co-pilot. Her sickness rapidly increased and she suddenly found herself throwing up on the side of the cabin. 

"You feeling better?" Mulder asked as he moved her long hair aside. It broke him to see her ill like this. 

"Yeah…I'm gonna be okay. We gotta get the pilot out, now,” she regained her confidence and, grabbing the kit, jogged out of the cockpit, making sure that everybody else was already out at the beach.

Mulder quickly fumbled with the pilot’s seat belt and got her out of it. On his way out he gave one last glance to the man, who, to his relief, had finally seemed to lose all consciousness. 

Once they were out of the plane, Scully sat down for a second. There was still a lot that they needed to do, but she was still feeling a little sick and needed to calm down, otherwise, she’d be of no use to anybody. Mulder checked on her a couple of times before realizing she just needed to breathe for a minute. Thus, he left her alone and started to round the other passengers. Michael’s girlfriend Linda tended to the pilot, making sure she was stable.

“Shouldn’t we be getting some supplies from the plane?” an old man by his side asked panting.

“First we have to make sure that it is safe to return to the crash,” Michael anticipated Mulder’s response. “Even if we don’t see fire or fuel leak, the plane could go off at any given moment.”

Mulder was happy to see there were other smart people around. He had no trouble taking charge and asserting his opinion on others, but it was always nice having back up.

Scully walked by his side, and he cocooned her under his arm, kissing the crown of her head. Her hair was messy, smelled of smoke, and even had some sand on it. But he didn’t care, he lengthened his kiss, holding her tight. He had been on the verge of losing her so many times, but not lately, and he was unused to this feeling.

“I’m fine, Mulder,” she said under her breath, meaning it.

Five more couples were sitting, lying, or standing on the beach, arguing about what to do next.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Scully started, raising her voice. “I’m a medical doctor. I want to reassess that everybody is in good condition before doing anything else.”

Everybody nodded and agreed and she asked them to sit on the sand in some orderly fashion. 

Michael and his girlfriend Linda were the youngest ones and seemed to have just some cuts from walking over the branches. Scully released them so they could help Mulder with the crash and keep checking on the pilot. Scully said a quick prayer for being as lucky as to have a trainee among the passengers. She would have handled this much worse had she been the only one with medical knowledge.

Before Mulder and Michael walked away to the plane she gave him a deep kiss on the lips. Scully felt slightly uncomfortable in these displays of affection in public. She was not used to it. But in times of danger, she felt her love for him grow, and feeling his body close to her gave her a sense of serenity. With one last peck to the lips, she sent him off.

“Be careful, okay?”

Mulder tended towards recklessness and putting himself in unnecessary danger in the past, but he had something to live for now. He had just gotten his freedom back, he was on his way to a vacation with his wife… He wasn’t going to screw this up. Not even with destiny trying to fuck with them once again.

“No need to worry, honey,” he kissed her on her forehead before walking away and joining Michael. “I’m a big boy now.”

Scully went back to the passengers and checked on Mrs. Adams first. She wished she had paid more attention to her name when the pilot welcomed them to the craft.

“Make sure she keeps breathing and check her pulse now and then,” Scully directed Linda. “I’ll be back in the blink of an eye.

The other eight people were feeling fine and didn’t need much treatment. Mr. and Mrs. Mendoza had managed to correctly immobilize the woman’s sprained ankle using a stick and some strips ripped from his t-shirt. So she moved to the oldest couple.

"Larry, you said it was going to be a nice trip to the beach,” the lady was complaining to her husband and Scully couldn’t help to chuckle. “I should've known better! You always get me into trouble.”

“How is this my fault, Joan?” the old man retorted. “Please, ma’am, put some sense into her,” he pleaded with Scully.

“Joan, right?” Scully started examining the lady. “How are you feeling?”

She was slightly worried about her. Her breathing hadn’t slowed down yet, nor her heartbeat. The man had told her on the plane that she had had a heart attack some years ago and was worried about her.

“I’m feeling better, but still so nervous,” the lady answered, panting. “I can’t calm down.”

“Tell me about yourselves,” Scully tried. “How long have you been together?”

“Fifty years married. And we’re still rolling,” Larry answered, proud.

“I wouldn’t mind a little less rolling and a little more sitting at home out of danger right now,” Linda replied, and Scully noticed the playfulness in her voice. She was going to be okay, just needed to breathe for a couple of minutes.

Scully pondered for a moment about where she would be fifty years from now. Sitting on their unremarkable porch, sipping a beer with Mulder seemed like such a serene and easy thing to accomplish. But somehow she knew that adventure time was always going to be on the horizon for them.

After finishing the round, Scully went back to Linda and Mrs. Adams.

“She seems to be waking up,” Linda said as soon as she heard her footsteps on the sand. “What should we do?”

“We need to keep her resting and hydrated,” she assessed, calling for Mr. Mendoza to deliver a message to Mulder, who was finally attempting to enter the plane.

The man ran away as if his life depended on it.

"Sir! Mr. Mulder! Your wife is asking for you!"

The use of that word startled him for a second. He was so used to correcting people saying that kind of thing, that he almost forgot that she indeed was his wife now. The narrow band on his ring finger was proof of that. She hadn't wanted anything fancy, so he had picked a couple of basic gold rings.

Mulder dismissed his thoughts about his new status and got up, feeling a little dizzy. The blow to his head hadn't been so big, but between that, and the heat and dehydration, it was keeping him from being 100%. He was thankful he had been keeping fit the last few years in his confinement.

"What does she need?" Mulder finally asked the man who had come to fetch him.

"She said we would need all the water you can gather, and try to make radio contact.”

Mulder was a little apprehensive about going back to the cockpit, but he sent Michael and Ricardo, to unload the snack cart while he tried the radio. He sent some messages but wasn’t sure about it, since he didn’t get any confirmation or sound back. Before his luck ran out, he decided it was high time to leave the wreckage and went back to the beach. 

The others had gathered all the food and water, leaving soda and alcoholic beverages aside at Scully’s recommendation. There was nothing they could have wanted more than to get drunk and pass out till morning, but being dehydrated was not what any of them needed right now. 

Mr. and Mrs. Kelley had been walking around the islet trying to find any inhabitants, but after walking around for an hour, they had come back with no sight of any other human being. 

Having gone on a beach summer holiday, none of the passengers had packed any warm clothing. Luckily, most of them had brought their own beach towels and were setting a camp around the bonfire to spend the night. Jessica had managed to tell them in between fainting that she had been able to send an emergency signal at some moment, so they were hoping to be rescued sooner than later. 

Michael was doing his best to start the fire so they could spend the night a little bit warmer, but he couldn't get the spark. 

"If only I had my gun,” he groaned, “I could open a bullet and—." 

"It wouldn't work," Mulder and Scully spoke at the same time and laughed at the memory. 

How many times had they slept in the wild not knowing if they were going to make it out of the woods alive? It seemed like it had been one too many, but they looked into each other’s eyes and knew they would prevail this time, too. 

"Let me try?" Violet Kelley finally said, taking the stones from Michael. "Let's see if all those Girl Scout years paid off…" 

After some tries, she finally managed to create a spark and everybody clapped, breathing happily for the first time in hours. The Mendozas and Kelleys had managed to pile up a good amount of dry wood and once the spark started spreading, they got a warm and gleaming fire. If there was someone out there looking for them, they should be able to spot the smoke soon. Hopefully. Because as soon as it got dark, smoke in the sky wouldn’t be such an easy thing to spot.

For that matter, they decided to set some smaller fires along the coastline: if the smoke couldn't help, maybe the light would. Also, it would be useful to keep predators away—if there were any, because they hadn't encountered any big animals either, only some birds and reptiles. 

After a feast of sandwiches and chocolate bars, they shared some stories to lighten the mood. A couple of hours later, everybody was fast asleep and only Mulder was keeping watch. He had offered to take care of the first shift, as generally, it took him a while to fall asleep anyhow. When he heard the chopper clattering, it sounded like celestial bells ringing. 

"Scully, wake up!" He yelled, moving about to wake everybody. "We're getting outta here!” 

The paramedics on the helicopter congratulated Scully on her handling of the pilot situation. Had it not been for her, the lady would surely be far worse off. As a medical doctor, she felt like it was her duty to keep everybody safe. But, this time, she was happy to hand out that responsibility and walk away, no worry in mind. She was so eager to get home and start her newly-wed life. She still had a couple of days left from her work leave and was looking forward to spending them with Mulder at their home.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading.  
> Comments are always appreciated :)


End file.
